Tag Archives: Valarie Jarrett

Jun 8 2014

A Military Prospective on Politics from those that have served


This is a repost from Special Operations Speaks a private source of information from former military NCO’s and Officers that served in the elite units of the US military. We are the ones that were the boots on the ground and we (especially the higher ranking) know better than anyone in Washington what is going on. The only exceptions are the very few that are there and have served. This repost is from.

Dennis B, Haney – Lt Col, USAF (Ret) Wild Weasel #1023
SOS Operations Coordinator
Special Operations Speaks
www.SpecialOperationsSpeaks.com

This past weekend, the Obama Administration treated us to a Rose Garden event unparalleled in its arrogance and symbolic malevolence toward all that America represents.  As the co-opted and simpering American press watched, the President exploited the distraught parents of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, and hailed Bergdahl’s release from the clutches of the jihadists who held him for five years in exchange for the unleashing of five notoriously dedicated terrorists, all fat and sassy straight out of Gitmo, upon the world scene.

But what America really witnessed on Saturday was President Obama’s continuing deliberate and traitorous dismantling of three of our four fundamental elements of National power: Diplomacy, Information and the Military. The fourth element is the Economy, and if we try, we could likely make a case for that as well.

The tortured decision-making that led to the release of five prime enemies, who were each made fit and combat-ready, compliments of the U.S. taxpayers, flies in the face of logic and of the U.S. National interest. Yet it follows a long pattern of policies favoring militant Islam over United States and world safety.

The Muslim Brotherhood long ago infiltrated our Nation’s capital, coming to settle in key Executive Branch advisory and appointed positions.   The Muslim Brotherhood, whose operatives now influence so many policy-level decision-makers across this Administration, in fact are the ideological soul mates of the jihadis who captured Bergdahl. The Obama administration used Qatar, a Taliban supporter and home-away-from-home for Yousef al-Qaradawi, the senior jurist of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a go-between to negotiate with the Taliban and Haqqanis. The Brotherhood influence was never more evident than in the Rose Garden act of prime time symbolic surrender, and very likely helped shape the terms of the GITMO detainee release.  That same influence was also at work in the days leading up to and during the Benghazi massacre, when four Americans were sacrificed to the jihad and to the overarching demands of the 2012 Presidential campaign.   Jihad is alive and well in Washington, D.C.

The Saturday Rose Garden drama was a National tragedy; a clinic in strategic psychological operations. It was an Islamist demonstration of the level of control they exercise over the governance of the United States, through this President and his key advisors.

Special Operations Speaks condemns the dismantling of our Military while upgrading the militant forces of the jihadists.

We condemn the media for its culpability in the active dis-informing and demoralizing of the American people.

We condemn the deliberate dismantling of American diplomatic image, credibility, and its hard-won standing as a bona fide champion for good around the world for the past century.

We urge our flag officers, in uniform and retired, to step up to the plate and be counted just as many of their warrior privates have done in these past days as they witness the daily dismantling of the Republic that has granted them the special trust and confidence of the American People.

Special Operations Speaks votes No Confidence in this administration and in its destructive policies.

May 18 2014

What Started Us Down the Path of Destruction to Our Constitution?


I am in the final stages of publishing a book exposing the false claims that mankind is destroying the planet by the use of fossil fuels i.e. coal, oil and natural gas. The lies that have been told on this subject put the lies of Hitler and Goebbels into the league of rank amateurs. But like those two infamous Politicians those Politicians today that practice those same arts of lies and deceit have the same motives in mind; absolute power over the people.

When I became a Green Beret one of the things I was taught as an officer, besides the arts of war, was how to bring down a government for that was our original mission.  So today when I see what is being done in America I see that there are those that are doing what I was taught to do. The only way to counter that is with the truth and that is the purpose of this blog as I stated in my About section.

The wedge that those that desire “power” are using against us is “CLIMATE CHANGE” that we are told is caused by too many people and using too much energy therefore we are not sustainable. The truth is that the climate has always changed and that there isn’t enough carbon based fuels on the planet to do what they claim will happen. The original projections of doom and gloom have continued to be pushed into the future as we reach points in time where the disasters were to happen and they were not there. The latest IPCC assessment AR5 does this again. So what follows is a section from the introduction of the book I am written to destroy this travesty against our way of life.

The belief that CO2 is causing climate change on the planet by raising the planet’s temperature came primarily from the late 1960’s. The belief was that the increased temperatures, from CO2, would then change the world’s climate patterns which would then result in the melting of the world’s glaciers, increased storms and probably loss of valuable crop lands by rising sea levels. The implied result on the world’s civilizations will be catastrophic and therefore there will be a significant loss of life from both the climate change and the probable wars that will be fought over dwindling resources.

To prevent this from happening the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, having met at Stockholm from 5 to 16 June 1972, made a statement part of which is, “… having considered the need for a common outlook and for common principles to inspire and guide the peoples of the world in the preservation and enhancement of the human environment …” and then they established a set of principles and an international forum, the first of which was held in Rio de Janiero in June 1992 and then later Kyoto in 1997 where goals for a reduction in the CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels primarily from petroleum, coal and natural gas were agreed to by the parties. Efforts to date have been totally unsuccessful and the CO2 levels have now reached 400 ppm and the rate of growth is increasing at an accelerating rate that is currently above ~2 ppm per year.

The first major program to began the task of changing how the entire world would adapt to the “required” reductions in Carbon Dioxide was made public at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth-Summit), held in Rio-de-Janeiro on June 13, 1992, where 178 governments voted to adopt the program called UN Agenda 21. The final text was the result of drafting, consultation, and negotiation, beginning in 1989 and culminating at the two-week conference. Agenda 21 is a 300-page document divided into 40 chapters that have been grouped into 4 sections that was published in book form the following year:

Section I: Social and Economic Dimensions is directed toward combating poverty, especially in developing countries, changing consumption patterns, promoting health, achieving a more sustainable population, and sustainable settlement in decision making.

Section II: Conservation and Management of Resources for Development Includes atmospheric protection, combating deforestation, protecting fragile environments, conservation of biological diversity (biodiversity), control of pollution and the management of biotechnology, and radioactive wastes.

Section III: Strengthening the Role of Major Groups includes the roles of children and youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, business and industry, and workers; and strengthening the role of indigenous peoples, their communities, and farmers.

Section IV: Means of Implementation: implementation includes science, technology transfer, education, international institutions and financial mechanisms.

The goal of UN Agenda 21 is to create a world economic system that equalizes world incomes and standards of living and at the same time reduces Carbon Dioxide levels back to the levels that existed prior to the industrial age of ~300 ppm. We are now at 400 ppm and growing at a geometrically increasing rate now a bit over 2 ppm per year and at that rate we will reach 500 ppm in 2050 at which point the UN Climate models and there spokespersons Al Gore and James Hansen say we will have an ecological and economic disaster that is irreversible.

There are only two ways to achieve this reduction back to their ideal ~300 ppm and they are not mutual exclusive. One is to reduce the world’s population and the other is to either reduce energy consumption or make a switch to non carbon burning fuels such as solar PV or wind turbines. Agenda 21 is the driver for all the sustainability programs that are being implemented at this time in the United States and the European Union; which mean that if the belief that Carbon Dioxide is the ultimate reason for changes in global climate is not true, that untold trillions of dollars and massive economic restructuring would be unwarranted.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) we are using about 500 Quad of energy world wide right now of which maybe 15% is classed as sustainable, and there are estimated to be 7.0 billion people on the planet. That means that 425 Quad of energy usage is not sustainable and the world’s population could reach 9.0 billion by 2050. By then we would be using 900 Quad of energy at current growth trends of which probably 650 Quad will not be sustainable if nothing major changes. The goal of Agenda 21 is therefore to find ways to reduce the number of people or significantly reduce how much energy they use. Carbon taxes and the redistribution of wealth from rich countries to poor countries are the means to achieve this but there are no engineers on the planet that would say it would be possible to produce 650 Quad of sustainable generating capacity in 35 years (335% more than now), especially since no real effort has yet been made. And some of the “sustainable” categories are mutually exclusive e.g. growing plants for ethanol verses food.

To put this in perspective if we could make 250 Quad of reliable sustainable generating capacity annually that would mean that we could not have more than 1 billion people (actually the goal seems to be about half of that) on the planet and even those would not be able to live as well as we in the US do now. Prior to the 2008 financial collapse the US used about 100 Quad and had 300 million people. If the goal is 250 quad and 1 billion people that would mean a 25% reduction in the standard of living for all the advanced socialites. Since this is what is “required” to achieve the stated goals of preventing 500 ppm from happening it’s very obvious that there is a major problem brewing.

How did all this negativism about our future come about? Well actually it started in 1798 when Thomas Robert Malthus (b-1766 to d-1834) who was a cleric in the Church of England and a famous Classical English economist published his An Essay on the Principle of Population. This work and understanding it is critical to understanding our current situation. From Wikipedia we have the following. Malthus argued in his Essay (1798) that population growth generally expanded in times and in regions of plenty until the size of the population relative to the primary resources caused distress:

“Yet in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition”.

—Malthus T.R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter II, p 18 in Oxford World’s Classics reprint.

Malthus argued that two types of checks hold population within resource limits: positive checks, which raise the death rate; and preventive ones, which lower the birth rate. The positive checks include hunger, disease and war; the preventive checks, abortion, birth control, prostitution, postponement of marriage and celibacy. In later editions of his essay, Malthus clarified his view that if society relied on human misery to limit population growth, then sources of misery (e.g., hunger, disease, and war) would inevitably afflict society, as would volatile economic cycles. On the other hand, “preventive checks” to population that limited birthrates, such as later marriages, could ensure a higher standard of living for all, while also increasing economic stability. Malthus also argued against a variety of imaginable solutions, such as the notion that agricultural improvements could expand without limit and that would also prevent this from happening.

Of the relationship between population and economics, Malthus wrote that when the population of laborers grows faster than the production of food, real wages fall because the growing population causes the cost of living (i.e., the cost of food) to go up. Difficulties of raising a family eventually reduce the rate of population growth, until the falling population again leads to higher real wages. In the second and subsequent editions Malthus put more emphasis on moral restraint as the best means of easing the poverty of the lower classes.

Despite facts to the contrary as science found ways to provide more food from less land, the limitation of the world’s population has been the goal of many thinkers ever since. Today that view started by Malthus is promoted by the Club of Rome which was founded in 1968 about the same time as all the other like organizations started. From this group and others like it a one world government has been promoted which would be run by the world’s intellectual elites and they would limit growth and population to achieve a level that they believe is sustainable.

There are many scientists in the world that do not agree with the conclusions of the IPCC, not necessarily from bad science but from a lack of sufficient knowledge of all the relevant variables and the lack of computers of a sufficient capability to properly process the number of equations that would be required. Many of these scientists also believe that the world’s temperature is primarily controlled by other factors than CO2. The problem has been showing a provable theory based on science and physics on how this might occur and how could this alternative explanation be used to predict future global temperatures.

In this book we will show that properly constructed mathematical modeling can be used to predict world temperature with significantly greater accuracy than the IPCC computer models. The reason that the model proposed here is more accurate is that it is based on past changes in temperatures that have been observed and have documented patterns and those patterns have a reoccurring cycle. When those patterns are broken down into their simplest from and then properly modeled and plotted into the future it is found that the resultant model’s predictions match very closely with the observed world temperatures as published monthly by NASA.

 

Mar 11 2014

The Responsibilities of the Citizens and the Press


The unsaid understanding of the Constitution

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 ended with a Proposal to Change the existing Articles of Confederation to the Constitution that we now have.  There was a procedure to make changes in the Articles just as there is in the present Constitution and so a national debate ensued. On one side were those that wanted a stronger agreement between the states to solve existing problems; on the other side were those that felt the proposed Constitution went too far.  Those for the Constitution were the Federalists and those that were not (as written) were the Anti-Federalists. The compromise to get the votes necessary to make the change, were what we now know as the Bill-of-Rights which are the first 10 amendments to the constitution. Specifically they were a listing of things that the Federal Government could not do or had no jurisdiction over, the reason these were enacted as the first order of business of the new government was that the citizens, who had just fought the American Revolutionary War, did not want a Ruling Class to take over and negate what so many had just died for.  We would call this process consensus today as everybody got enough of what they thought was needed to get all 13 states to agree, albeit it was a long process lasting until 9th state ratified it on June 8, 1778 making it legal by the terms of the Articles. Four years later Vermont, the last state, ratified the Constitution making it all thirteen.

The first Amendment of the Constitution was of a guarantee of various fundamental freedoms; of freedom of religion, of free speech, a free press, the right to assemble, and the right to petition the government.  This was very important and so it was the first of what ended up being the Bill-of-Rights.

That held for almost 200 years and then we became spoiled and forgetful and to trusting of our elected representatives and we are where we are now with a congress, both the House and the Senate, and President and Vice President that have desires to nullify much of the Constitution and Bill-of-Rights.  These 537 elected representatives, both political parties, are now trying to tell 317,674,000 Americans (when this was written) that they know better than we do how to live our lives. Most families have issues managing 3 or 4 individuals so to assume that, that so few a number could manage the most complex economy that ever existed is frankly absurd.

There were three checks to the concentration of Federal power. The first was a knowledgeable citizenry, the next were the states themselves, and the last was the press. The Free Press was the last defense for maintaining a free country.  Their duty was to question and research everything the government was doing and to assume that there were nefarious reasons for anything that they proposed.  There should have been no distinction as to who was in power as all of them are human and we all have the same faults, self interest.

The politicians are no different from any of us and if given the opportunity they will find ways to gain power and influence. One of the ways they do this is to convince us that they are different from any of the rest of us, how that would be possible I’m not sure since they have the same DNA as we do.  According to them Businessmen and Financiers are all corrupt and they need to be managed by them. This would be no different from letting the Fox guard the hen house. The people in the government and the people in private business are identical and many go back and forth between the two sectors.  The only difference between the two is if a business does not provide a service or product you don’t like you don’t buy it and with no sales they go out of business.  In the public sector what you want does not matter it’s what the government will give you that you will get and if they need more money they tax you, which is not a choice you will pay them what they want.

The free Press is now incapable of doing its job, for various reasons, and so the citizens are not aware of what has been going for the past twenty some years.  The problem is that there are a host of very fundamental changes in play now in this country; it’s unlikely, in my opinion, that many of these “fundamental” changes will be successful and that will result in a high probability of economic collapse.

What is left of the free press will be one of the first to go. Unless they wake up!

Mar 6 2014

The Repeating Cycles of Social Time


A Major War is Coming!

Strauss and Howe in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning An American Prophecy outline how social or political time runs in cycles. There is much they have to say in their book and much of that goes all the way back to the Roman times where they find the name for this cycle from the Romans and it’s a Saeculum meaning a long human life of 80 to 90 years. This Saeculum is composed of 4 generations of about 20 some years each. Read the book for the full analysis which is very compelling but for here the salient point is near the end of each Saeculum there is a major war, no exceptions.

The cycles they identify go back to England and the war of the Roses 1459 to 1487 and since then there have been five complete cycles and we are now in the final stages of the sixth cycle which according to them ends around 2025 plus or minus a few years. This period that we are now in is the fourth turning (a turning meaning going from one generation to the other in the Saeculum) hence the name of the book. They can pin down the basic times that all this occurs because these changes have repeated themselves for 555 years now.

The last three major wars going back from the present were: WW II from 1941 to 1945; the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865 and then the American Revolution from 1775 to 1783. The civil war started 86 years after the American Revolution; WW II started 80 years after the Civil War started. The scary thing right now is that 80 years from 1941 is 2021 which is a likely start for the next major world war. However over all the Saeculum’s since the War of the Roses have been getting progressively shorter so that 80 years may not be a good guess.

Straussand Howe are not the only ones to see the pattern but even still they go to great lengths to show why it occurs and how many other sociologists have also seen all or some of the pattern they have identified in their book. I read the book after it came out in 98 or 99 and thought it was interesting and put in on my book shelf. After 9/11 I went back and read the book again since I remembered that they talked about that kind of an event happening around 2005. Since then I’ve read it a couple more times and I am now convinced they are right on and a major war is now eminent.

So based on current events (read my previous post on the Ukraine) which seem to parallel the years before WW II started, actually in 1938 in Europe, we can make a case for the next world war to start any time from 2016 to no later than 2022.

Mar 3 2014

What to do with the Russians?


But the real worry is what about the Chinese?

This president came into office just over 5 years ago with the “Stated” goal of making a “Fundamental” change to America.  Whether the American’s believed him or not he was going to do just that!  Progressives’ like Obama and his appointed minions believe that America is the problem in the world and that our large military scares everyone and that is why they do not like us. I would not agree with this proposition one bit, but but my opinion is irrelevant I’m not in politics either here nor there. However, that doesn’t mean I cannot understand what is going on in the world for I have studied the subject of global politics from both the military and civilian perspectives.

To the rest of the world what has Obama done? Well a partial listing follows: First a world apology tour for “us” being so bad; then he cancels the anti missile agreement with Poland, then he cancels the US manned space program, he does not negotiate a status of forces agreement in Iraq; he does nothing with the green movement in Iran; he begins to cancel DOD advanced weapons programs soon after assuming office; he encourages the Arab spring; he ignores Iran’s nuclear program for all practical purposes; he gives the impression that he does not like Israel; he proposes major reductions in US nuclear weapons; he announces that all American troops will be out of Afghanistan in 2014; he does nothing In Syria or prior to that in Georgia; he was AWOL after the Benghazi terrorist attack, he has his EPA continue to make regulation that start to close down major sections of the U.S. economy; then he announces that the U.S. military will be significantly reduced and more military programs are to be eliminated.

Foreign leaders with real world experience see a U.S. president with no experience dismantling the US military as fast as he can. They will obviously take advantage of this as real leaders always do.  So it’s no surprise that Putin is doing what he is doing which is to attempt to reestablish the old U.S.S.R. as there will be no military action against him; since the EC has no military and is dependent on Russian e.g. Putin, for their natural gas so there really is nothing that they can do other than complain.

The real issue is not Russia reassembling its empire but what will China do?  The logical thing for them is to see how the world acts or doesn’t act to the absorption of at minimum the eastern Ukraine into Russia.  If Putin gets away with this and its hard to see how he will not given the box that Obama has put himself in, unfortunately along with the rest of the country, they will likely make a similar move in their sphere of influence with those disputed islands with Japan or maybe even a much bigger target Taiwan.

The American Eagle has clipped wings and can no longer fly.

Feb 28 2014
Image

Tribute to those that Serve!


PassingtheColors

Feb 20 2014

Does God have a Place in Government?


The Founders Believed that it was Required

We have been conditioned today into believing that in the United States of America there is a wall between the church and the government — “The Separation of Church and State” — as it is now called.  Further we are told that this comes from our founding documents so it must be true — but is it? In searching those documents we find that those words or any derivation of them do not appear in any of the founding documents. But we also know that the use of the words God or the Creator (used inter-changeably here) and a fundamental belief in God was very important to the founders and that they reference God a lot in their writing and God was very prominent in all the public buildings; Federal, State and Local until after World War II. So how did we get from a nation founded on the belief in God to a secular state that can’t even acknowledging the existence of God?

Much, but not all, of this change can be traced to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its influence on the legal system up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court.  The ACLU was founded by Crystal Eastman, Roger Baldwin and Walter Nelles (an interesting fact is that Nelles has ties to what becomes the infamous ‘Students for a Democratic Society’  from the 60’s) who were all avid socialists and in all probability, communists at heart, if not in practice.  It could be said that they used their beliefs in what is called social justice today, to destroy the influence of religion since religion was deemed to be bad by Karl Marx, the founder of the principles of communism and the precursor of modern socialism.  Since the communist movement was very strong when these three were growing up this is a likely connection. Why else would so many of the court cases promoted by the ACLU be used to drive a wedge between the religious people of this country and their government; especially in the public schools of the country? The result is that ever since shortly after the end of WW II, we have been moving away from God.  God is no longer “fashionable”.

By what logic could this transformation be done? There must have been something that those wishing to change the American System found to give them an opportunity to make the change they desired. And there was; in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to a Baptist Association he wrote: “… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” Jefferson reflected his frequently as a speaking theme that the government is not to interfere with religion.

Jefferson in his misused reference was of course referring to the national or federal government which was proscribed in the First Amendment to not interfere with religion and specifically not establish a “state” religion.  This Amendment, part of the ‘Bill-of Rights,’ was written to keep the federal government out of the states and local communities where they, the local government could do as they pleased.  Meaning the people there could have their local government participate in religious activities without being dictated to, one way or the other, by the federal government.  Since for almost 200 years this principle held and the federal government used religion itself although non denominational it is hard to see how this has been turned around to what we have today.  We are constantly hearing how some religious item such as the Ten Commandments are being removed from public buildings as being offensive to the citizens. How did they get there then and be there for so long? Further if the founding fathers didn’t agree with how this issue was handled in the first few decades of the republic they would have changed something; since they did not this is prima fascia evidence that the ‘new’ interpretation is false.

However, with the ACLU now in full get religion out of the government mode they used Jefferson’s comments, out of context, to argue a case at United States Supreme Court and they were successful in 1947 by a 5 to 4 ruling in the Everson vs Board of Education case in stopping a state from using public funds for transporting student to a faith based school. The result of this ruling is directly responsibly for all that followed.

This view is absurd on face — since we know that in political theory the belief in a Supreme Being was a major requirement to have a viable Democratic Republic. This view is in all the political writing of the eighteenth century and very clearly stated by those writers for example Adam Smith and John Lock since only a moral (religious) people could vote for representatives to their legislative bodies and end up having representatives that were moral. In most societies dating back to earliest recorded history, people got their sense of morality from religion.  Therefore, if we did not have morality in public life, the representatives we elect would become corrupt and the government would become oppressive.  We see this corruption happening now in our country and it is my opinion that this is a direct result of removing God from the public conscious and in fact making belief in any God a target for ridicule and cheap humor by politicians and certainly those in the media and entertainment industry.

So, that gives us the basis for the rest of this discussion on God and Government and why the two cannot be separated in the sense that it now is; that is if we are to continue to remain a free people.

At the core, there are only two kinds of governments.  The first is based on the existence of a “creator”, or prime mover.    The second is purely secular and proposes a “random spontaneous life” argument. Monarchies, democracies, republics and dictatorships, free markets, communism and fascism all have their roots in one of these systems.  But first we need to understand the basis for where the law used to govern us originates.

After reading many books and other material on government: John Lock, Adman Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Pain, Thomas Hobbes, Charles-Louis Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to name a few, we find that some basic principles as to God and Government can be developed.  I have drawn my conclusions and beliefs from these writings and present my interpretation below. However, any mistakes in interpreting their views are entirely of my own invention.  Due to time and space restrictions, I have regrettably omitted many others philosophers and scholars that have contributed over centuries to the principle views held during the eighteenth century when our country was founded.  I mean them no disrespect and it’s only my late coming to this subject that prevents me from a more complete listing.

The first form of government is that which is based on natural law and natural law is that which man can see in nature, though the use of reason, because the Creator, God, put it there when he created the universe.  Man in the state of nature (meaning there is no government) is sovereign in himself; in that he has made no oath to serve another man nor entered into any compact to share that power so he alone can control what he does or does not do.  This is what gives the meaning to the sovereign which is simply put that there is no law above the person that has the sovereign. Therefore this man in nature has the sovereign power and it must come directly from God.  He is his own master free to do as he pleases within the framework of what the creator made available to him.

In this state of nature with no government all men are therefore equal and they control their own lives, what they do or don’t do. They do everything they do in the belief that it is in their self interest to provide for their existence (food, water, shelter etc).  But men soon found that two could do more than one and three more than two and so they would share the fruits of their combined labor in some agreed upon manner.  This might work for one or two or even three men but in a larger group of men, who would decide on the division of labor and division of the fruits of their labors?  In all probability the strongest and/or the smartest would get the others to cede power and authority.

At that point what is called a ‘social contract’ was formed, and since protection would be one of the primary goals of this contract, that was typically the reason that this person was given the right of leadership.  In so doing, individuals had effectively transferred their sovereign to that leader and he now held ‘only’ what they had given him by consent.  By the early eighteenth century it was thought that once the sovereign was given to a leader, it stayed with that leader or his heirs permanently.  However starting with the Magna Carta and solidifying in the mid 18th century other ideas became prominent and they were very different.  The new belief was that if those that made the laws (called the magistrates) did not serve the people, then the people had the right to take back the sovereign power and form a new government. The historical logic and writing of this is a bit more complex than what I present here but in general that is the core principle. The US War of Independence and French Revolution, although very different, are prime examples.

From this line of thought comes our Declaration of Independence and the first two paragraphs are shown next.  I have added bold to the key provisions.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

What follows next in the Declaration is a listing of the grievances which aren’t necessary for this discussion, and so we skip to the last paragraph.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

From this we can state the following, in the Creator based form of governance:

ONE. There is a Creator — a God that created the universe and all that is in it.

TWO. The Creator gives us our rights through natural law, such as: the right to life, liberty and property. These rights being God given cannot be taken away.

THREE. We cede the administration of those rights by our government in return for the government’s agreement to protect us and insure equal justice.

FOUR. The agreement between the People and the government is the social contract and in our case is embodied in the Constitution.

FIVE. The proof of the above is in the oath of office of elected office holders and military personnel, especially the officer corps.  They swear an oath to defend the Constitution, not the government.

SIX. Therefore the sovereign that the people possess resides not in the government but in the Constitution itself.

SEVEN. The People cannot give the government what they did not have and so a government based on the sovereign given by the people cannot do anything that the people did not specifically give the government or that they had in their power to give.

EIGHT. The Constitution can only be changed by the process defined within it and so since a procedure for change is contained in the document there can be no justification for interpreting in anyway other than the way it was originally written.  It is a living document.  However, only the people can change it, not the legislators the executives or the judges. A Constitutional change can be made by a 2/3’s vote of approval of the various States so the people can change their government any time if they desire.

NINE. If a politician does not follow his oath to defend the Constitution and in fact states that he believes that it is no longer valid, he has broken his oath and must be removed from office.  The procedure for doing this is impeachment.

TEN. If the government does not follow the guidelines of the Constitution it is the duty of the citizens either to elect new representatives or to form a new government.

This then is the basis of our form of government which is called a Federal Republic or sometimes a Constitutional Republic.  We are a federation of states with elected representatives and they govern based on the limits of power we have given them as defined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  It was assumed that those elected would be believers in God, primarily Christians of any of the various denominations.  Since the country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles for a Judeo-Christian people, The Constitution as written would only work for a society with those values.  If the People’s beliefs have changed then the form of the government would have to change as well — this would be a fundamental change.

The other form of government is very different. This form is not based on a belief in God but is purely secular in nature. This is not to say that the people don’t have religion, only that it plays no part in their government.  In this form the sovereign resides in the government and how it got there matters not.  There may be elections and there may not be, but one thing is common and that is that there is a “ruling class” and a “class that is ruled”.  Those in power come from the historical vestiges of wars, revolutions, dynasties, feudal societies or wealth.  The common man may or may not live reasonably well but he is the common man and a change in class status is uncommon and unlikely.

Typically in these governments the documents that form the government are not fixed nor are they based on natural law.  This means that those that rule can change anything they desire for any reason they desire.  They can do this because there are no real limits placed on them as might exist in a true Constitutional government.  Their usual oaths of office are to swear allegiance to the primary ruler; be it a King, Queen, Emperor or Party Leader.  You can see that if an oath is given to the ruler then there is no recourse available if that leader turns bad.  An oath is an oath and must be honored.

In this form of government the people have no real power, the rulers are hand picked from among those in the ruling class and the government appoints a much higher percentage of the workers in the legislative branches and local administrators in the various functions of government.  This is not to say that these people are oppressed or without any benefits, for that is not the case in most governments today.  But the amount of true freedom they have depends on the exact form of their government which can be a social democracy an aristocratic democracy and or one of the other forms such as would be found in a communist state or even a monarchy or a dictatorship.  Outside the United States this is the form most other people live under.

In any event, they have no God given rights of any kind, only those rights that the state and its ruler allows them to have; today meaning ‘Positive Rights’ as exposed by our current president. These forms of government are not stable.  They may last for a hundred years but few last much longer without some form of revolution or civil war that changes the form of that government. Some would say that we had a civil war so why are we different?

The difference is that the issue of slavery was put aside initially to gain freedom from the British Crown.  Because slavery, which was common in the world, (in fact the word Slave comes from Slav, due to the fact that in the Middle Ages a vast number of Europeans were regularly taken into slavery by raiding Ottomans’ and Arabs and carted off to Africa and the Middle East) was an anathema to a system based on freedom, there was considerable opposition to it that needed to be resolved before the new country could move forward. This was largely resolved by the Civil War, although cultural artifacts remained for years afterward.  Further, the essential form of our government did not change.

From this we can state the following in the Secular form of governance:

ONE. There may or may not be a Creator, but whether there is or not is not material to the governance of man.

TWO. Once a government is formed by a people, that government has ‘all’ the sovereign power and can make any laws that it choices to.

THREE. Therefore there is no ‘real’ limit to the power of this form of government.

Four. Whether there is a founding document or not is not relevant in this form of government since the government has the absolute sovereign which can not be taken back other than by a revolution.

Five. All the rights of the people come from the government and are only what it allows them to have.

SIX. In most if not all cases the public servants swear an oath to the head of the government not to their founding documents.

SEVEN. Further, since there is no direct link to a creator there are no natural laws and without natural laws there are no fixed morals.  This is called moral relativism.

EIGHT. Without a moral base there is no way to measure good or evil and without a way to measure good and evil a leader or ruler can justify any action they desire in that it is only his opinion as to what is good for the country that counts.

NINE. The lack of a frame of reference for the morals of the people in this form of government mean that at some point the government will become oppressive.

TEN. In these kinds of governments there is strong trend to a state of minimum personal freedom.

So in summary, we have the first model of governance which allocates power in this order: God, the individual, then government. We have a second model, Secular Governance, which allocates power first to the government then to the individual.  In the first form God is the primary source of power and in the second form the government is the primary source of power.  Since we know from thousands of years of history that men can be corrupted, and they often are, why would anyone want a government based solely on the wishes of what a man would want?

Some would say today that we are an enlightened people now and the old ways of the founders and the restraints of our constitution are no loner needed.  To them I say they are wrong.  History has repeated itself many times with great republics formed and then lost to the corruption of men and their government.  There can be no rational basis for this belief other than one of our ignorance of history.

We can either believe in the ways of Christ, which were non violent in the New Testament and can be summed up in the statement, “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you” or you can have a belief that men can make better rules of living and behavior then those of nature’s Creator.  You can either believe in God or believe in man as the source of understanding, but not both.

The Founders believed in a Christian God as found in our Bible.  The government they established was one that had those beliefs at its core.  Being men we are not perfect and so neither was our conduct neither in the formation of the country nor in the application of our government.  However, despite our faults and misdirection in our Constitution we formed the best system yet devised by man.  And, during the debate on the form of that document, a major impasse came to be with arguments back and forth and hard positions being taken.   With no compromises possible Benjamin Franklin proposed that they all pray to God for guidance.  They all went to a nearby church and did as he suggested.  Coming back the mood was completely changed and compromises to the things that separated them were found.  In short order thereafter we had the Constitution; so was this the work of God or do we want to believe that it was pure chance?  Given the results of what that divinely inspired document produced, at least until now, it is clear that we were destined to be a force of good in the world — the Beacon of Freedom that all looked to for guidance.  We do not need to be fundamentally changed.

Ronald Reagan, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

Feb 20 2014

Justification of a Modern Government


From Aquinas to Rousseau

This is a very brief summary of the basis of our government and in my opinion this process started in earnest between 1259 and 1264 in Paris France when St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274) wrote Summa Contra Gentiles (The Summa Against the Gentiles) which is considered to be a seminal work perhaps the best of the middle ages.  In this work he blends the then newly discovered works of Plato and Aristotle, which had been lost to Europe since the fall of Rome, along with Roman law and the teachings of Christianity into one work. There is no doubt that he was a man of very high intellect and even today, 750 years later, his work should be read by anyone interested in the foundations of and the justifications of law and government.

He left no stone un-turned discussing theology, ethics, politics, just war, sexual ethics including birth control and abortion and even property rights.  Although many of us today would take exception with some of his views we can all agree that his writing on the subject set the tone for what was to follow between then and July 4, 1776 over 500 years later.

This blog is not about historical political theory so we’ll skip forward almost 400 years and look at three great thinkers that shaped the modern state. First to Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) and his LEVIATHAN, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a COMMON-WEALTH Ecclesiastical and Civil Published in 1651.

Then John Locke (1632 – 1704) and his Essays on the Law of Nature (1663-64); An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1671- 90) and The Two Treatises of Government in the former, The False Principles and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his Followers, are Detected and Overthrown The later Is an Easy Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End, of Civil Government (1689).

Then finally to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) who is best known for his Discourse on Inequality (1755); Discourse on Political Economy (1755) and On Social Contract (1762).  The writings of these men are instrumental to the logic and basis for the writing of the Constitution of the United States.

Hobbes wrote in Leviathan his support of a constitutional monarchy and that it was the natural order to have a strong authoritarian monarchy. He proposed that man had agreed to this in a ‘social contract’ wherein man acknowledged the monarchy in return for the protection that gave him.  This view was based on the premise that without a strong government man would be no more then a lone individual living by his own wits and subject to no law or rule; therefore he could do solely as he pleased.  He called this being in the state of nature.  The following quote from Leviathan “Chapter XIII.: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery” is one of the best known passages in English philosophy; it describes the ‘natural state’ that mankind would be in, were it not for the political community.

“In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

So according to Hobbes:

In this state, people fear death, and lack the things necessary to commodious living, and the hope of being able to work to obtain them. Therefore, man accedes to a ‘social contract’ and establishes a civil society to avoid this.

Society is a population living beneath a sovereign authority, to which all individuals in that society cede some of their rights for the sake of protection. Abuses of power by this authority are to be accepted without question as the price of peace. There is no separation of powers in this view as we know them.

The sovereign must have total control over civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers.

Locke writing twenty or so years after Hobbes came to a very different view developing what would be called today a liberal republicanism and a foundation for a republic.  He was probably the biggest although not the only political theorist to influence those that wrote the U.S. Constitution.

Locke takes a more optimistic view then Hobbes writing that in the state of nature man is characterized by reason and tolerance not always brute force as could be inferred from Hobbes. However he also believed in the social contract between men and their government but in a more limited sense where the government had a responsibility to the subjects and that if exceeded actually gave the subjects the right to rebel.  Locke went on to state that in a natural state all were equal and independent and they all had a right to defend themselves.  This was the basis for the words in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, “life Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the preamble.

Locke believed in the right to private property; the accumulation of wealth (qualified); and in the principle that labor was the basis of property.  He also developed the principles of money and monetary policy and the relationship to trade.  His views on money probably had an influence on Adam Smith and his seminal work The Wealth of Nations published in 1776.

Lock also wrote that education was very important stating that, “I think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.”  In that same line of thought Locke wrote that “the little and almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies have a very important and lasting consequences” then he argued that “associations of ideas” that one makes when young are more important than those made later because they are the foundation of the self.”

One other thing that Locke believed in was ‘religious’ freedom and equal rights.  Further Thomas Jefferson used Locke views when he wrote a bill for religious freedom in Virginia.  Locke like Hobbes believed in Natural Law which was the belief that there were moral principles that were set by nature (God) and were therefore valid every where.  Natural law is not to be confused with common law or case law which are laws which are not universal and are based on ‘local’ judicial recognition.

One of Locke’s more controversial ideas was that because of the ‘social contract’  between the people and the governing body the legislative branch of government that if those representatives went against the wishes of the people that the people had the ‘right’ to rebel against their government.  What is new about this is the right of the people to withdraw from the ‘social contract.’ However, Locke did not take this to go as far as overthrowing the monarch unless that monarch had broken is obligation to defend the country.

Rousseau is the developer of the liberal democracy principles which is a third way of looking at the ‘social contract’ and ‘natural law.’  Rousseau born in Geneva which was a Republic had a different view and took what Lock had developed and went further eliminating the monarchy at least in part.  Rousseau published his The Social Contract in 1762 fourteen years before the American Declaration of Independence. The work begins with, “Man is or was born free, and he is everywhere in chains, One man thinks himself the master or others, but remains more of a slave than they.”

Rousseau argues that the sovereignty (or the power to make laws) should be in the hands of the people. The terms he used then are different today but what he said was that the power to make laws rested in the people and the people allowed the legislators (that represented them) to make the laws.  This would be a true Representative Democracy but Rousseau stated that this system would only work in a small city state like the Geneva he grew up in.

Rousseau also wrote, “…that the general will exists to protect individuals against the mass, not to require them to be sacrificed to it.” This was a recognition that a pure democracy would not work.

Rousseau was one of the first to propose developmental education dividing the process into three stages.  The first stage is from birth to the age of about 12 when Children are guided by the emotions and impulses.  In the second stage from 12 to about 16 reason starts to develop.  Lastly from 16 onward the child develops into an adult and should also be required to learn a manual skill even if high education is pursued. He also states that at the age of 16 they are ready for a companion of the opposite sex.

An explanation of terms due to language change:

The ruler of a territory could be the Monarch the Prince or today the President

The legislative body could be an Assembly the Magistrate or a Delegate today a representative or senator

Democracy is where all eligible voters vote directly on all issues

Representative government is where the people elect a person to represent them on legislative maters

Feb 11 2014

Why do People Do What They Do?


The Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow, a very famous mid twentieth century psychologist, developed a concept referred to now as Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” in 1943 in a paper he wrote A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow’s concept was that humans would react to their environment in a particular and structured order to satisfy their internal drives or needs which he called the self-actualization theory.  He further showed this as a pyramid with things like air and water at the bottom and things like personal gratification at the top on the pyramid.

His logic is that air is required for life above all else and therefore that need must be satisfied first.  Next, we must have water and food and then an environment that’s not hostile to us.  Once these basic or core needs are met we get into more personal needs such as love and respect.  These personal or social needs always come after the physical but can become very important if we feel secure that the others have been met and are not in danger of being taken away.  There are the five levels to Maslow’s self-actualization theory.

Level 1 Physiological needs, such as hunger, thirst, and sex

Level 2 Safety needs such as security, stability, and order

Level 2 Belongingness & love needs e.g. affection, affiliation, identification

Level 4 Esteem needs, such as needs for prestige, success, self-respect

Level 5 Self-actualization needs, such as realizing potential

The first two levels of Maslow’s Hierarch of Needs go a long way to explain basic human nature.  For example the movement of Mexicans into the American southern boarder states with Mexico.  The reason being, that differences in the first two basic levels are the reasons for the occurrence of immigration.

From the forward of this book is the fact that the individual will always do what his or her best interest. The logic and theory for this was adequately proven in the book Wealth of Nations first published in 1776 by Adam Smith. And further this is supported by Level 1 & s from Maslow’s work. All attempts to disprove the theory of free markets a central feature of the theories proved by Smith have failed.  They all fail, including the works of Marx and Keynes, because all the examples that are used are not ones where there is a real “free” market.

The second fact, also discussed in the forward to this book is that after many centuries of trying just about every conceivable kind of political or governmental system imaginable we find that there are really only two basic kinds.  The book The Five Thousand Year Leap written by Cleon Skousen gives an excellent explanation on the reasons for this.

The first based on the rule of a single party usually through the leadership of a strongman.  This person could be a King or a President for life and has immense personal power but still must have the support of a group of close confidants that carry out this dictates.  Historically this form of government appears to be the most “common” form of government that has every existed. In this form of government the people exist, only, to support the government, they are subjects.  This form develops from either an attempt at Democracy or form anarchy after the collapse of a government which was until the formation of the United States with its Constitution the only other possibilities there were.

Today the only other form of government that is possible is something new and it is a system based on a set of laws and principles that form the basis for the legitimacy of the government, a fixed constitution.  The U.S. Constitution is the best example of this form being the one that has lasted the longest, so far, since it was designed to be very hard to change. In this system the federal government is there solely at the will of the people and is there solely to protect the people not to rule them. However, there is a great risk here for if this system does not have very strong, not just adequate, checks and balances the politicians will over time turn this system into the government of a strongman, backed by a ruling party.

Why these previous paragraphs are so important is that the principles identified can totally explain the reason for the movement of people from one place to another, be it from one side of town to the other or from one country to another. The movement occurs because of either economic or political restrictions or both on the individual where he or she is and that the individual see’s that he or she can live better someplace else.

If there are no restrictions on movement then the movement will be quick and if there are restrictions the movement will be slowed.  But in either case unless there are significant and insurmountable physical barriers be they natural or man made the movement will not be stopped.

Being a person with a strong technical background it would be logical to be able to put this into a set of principles much like those that are used in science and engineering.  In this case we will use the form used for the explanation of the laws of thermodynamics (which is about the movement of energy – heat).  There are three laws of thermodynamics which we will not go into this is not about engineering. The engineering form (Three principles or laws) used to explain thermodynamics by scientists and Engineers does seem to fit well when also trying to explain the motivation behind the movement of people so that is why it was used here.

The First Law of Motivation can then be stated that the principle factors determining the core of human behavior are predominantly genetically fixed. This is adequately explained in Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs so further discussion here is not needed.  Therefore it can be stated that we are dealing with basic principles of motivation that apply to all humans.

The Second Law of Motivation can then be stated as individuals will move to the place that satisfies the greatest number of their needs in the order explained by Maslow.  Or stated a different way we can say that individuals will always move to a place that allows them to move up Maslow’s pyramid. That flow will be from the least to the most and will be inversely proportional to the strength of the resistance to that flow be that resistance natural or man made.

The Third Law of Motivation is that if there is no individual freedom and there is no opportunity where the person is and there is therefore no way to move then there is no motivation to work or be productive as there is no personal advantage.  This will create a stagnant society where people will only do the bare bones necessities to survive and no more.  Further it will take prodding by the government to get even that done.

The Second Law of Motivation explains why there is and has always been a movement of people into the United States.

The Third Law of Motivation explains why the old U.S.S.R. collapsed when its work force could no longer be coerced into being productive citizens.

The Second Law of Motivation explains why U.S. Citizens almost never move out of the country even when that are extolling the virtues of other political systems.

The Third Law of Motivation explains why in a welfare state there is no incentive for those at the bottom to move out.  All their first level needs are taken care of by the state.

The issue that we face now with immigration legal or illegal is one where the standard of living in the United Sates combined with the higher level of personal freedom that we have makes for a powerful magnet to those not so fortunate.  This is especially true at the border between Mexico and the United States where the disparity is large.  The only thing that has prevented a title wave of Mexicans to enter the country is the desolate land that must be crossed over much of the southern border.  Even still and despite the dangers a high percentage of the hundreds of thousands that start the journey eventually make it across.

The U.S. Mexico border could have been sealed long ago if the government had wanted to.  Would it have been expensive, of course it would have.  That isn’t the question the question is why it wasn’t done.  Three reasons prevent a barrier from ever being built.

One the Democrat Party sees the Mexicans as a source of future votes since they will vote at some time in the future in a higher percentage to them then to republicans’ because of entitlements. 

Two the Republican Party sees the Mexicans as a source of cheep labor and that they could be used as leverage to hold down labor costs for companies. 

Three both saw them (the documented and undocumented) as a cheep source of personal servants to do their menial work and take care of their children. How many politicians have been caught not paying taxes for having au pairs, nannies and other domestic help?

Under President Ronald Reagan an attempt at solving the problem was tried with amnesty and a promise of better broader security. The border security never happened and without securing the border the flow is never going to stop as the Second Law of Motivation explains.  The lure of moving up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was too strong since they, the Mexicans, were on the bottom in Mexico and there was no way they could move down any further, they were already on the bottom, and they also didn’t believe they had any chance to move up where they were.

To stop the flow is not possible but there are two ways to significantly slow it down. One is with a very solid and formidable barrier that makes it very difficult to make it across.  In addition we would need cleared zones, on the U.S. side, that are off limits to everyone so that anyone in them can be detained.  This would require relocating Americans and a significant military presence.  Something like the barrier between the east and west in Europe after WW II is what would be need, only keeping people out not in.  We also know that, that was not 100% effective.

The other method would be to change the differential in the standard of living between Mexico and the U.S. Raising that of Mexico reduces the incentive just as lowering that of the U.S. does. Lowering the U.S. standard is the more practical since raising the standard in Mexico is not what the politicians there want. Either or both minimizes the flow in accordance with the Second Law of Motivation.

If we don’t build a barrier or if we don’t lower our standard of living to be more in line with the rest of the world then we are faced with the problem of having created a very unfair system of immigration.  The reason for this is not enough Mexicans (we’ll use that term for all of Central America) are allowed in nor could there be as we would need to allow many millions in to stop the illegal flow.  And Mexico is not interested in helping with the problem as the flow of people north is a pressure relief on them politically. And besides with the growing Mexican influence Mexico City has a growing influence on policies being established in Washington.

Feb 10 2014

Universal Suffrage


Good or Bad?

Suffrage is the term given for the right to cast a vote.  In a pure Democracy everyone of the established voting age or any other qualifier can cast a ballot.  Then all it takes is for one side to have one vote more then the other side in order to win, which is majority rule.  In addition in a pure democracy all the citizens with the right to vote would vote on all issues directly.  Rousseau wrote about that kind of Democracy in his The Social Contract since he was very familiar with this kind of government from Geneva where he grew up.  Obviously this system only applies to a small area or town.

That direct voting by the citizens on everything has always been considered to be both bad and impossible especially at the Federal level and so when the Constitution was written only men (predominately white) with property were allowed to vote. But that restrictive view was not universal and so a few years later under President Jackson, who believed that voting rights should be extended, they were. Therefore by 1840 universal white male suffrage (and some blacks) was the norm, and nearly all requirements to own property had been dropped.

This expansion of the voting franchise continued unabated until 1971 when by that time all Citizens over 18 male or female and of any race could vote.  Whether that was good or not it was the law of the land through the amendment process to the Constitution (14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th and 26th Amendments plus various legislative acts).  The United States was the first major country to have full suffrage for women starting with a few states as early as 1869 and completed when the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920.

The problem with this expansion of the franchise was not with any of the various groups that were added but with an ever increasing lack of understanding by the voters on whom or what they were voting for. There were two parts to this:

The first problem was the education system which stopped teaching the principles of government.  This was by far the worst problem for if the Citizens no longer understood their system of government then they could be manipulated by those seeking power.

The second problem was the formation of political parties that took advantage of this and created block voting where it didn’t matter who was running or what the issue was — it was a vote cast only for the party.

With the very lose voter registration process and vote manipulation (this maters a lot when the vote is close) going on today we have created a system where the winner is chosen more by popularity and money then anything that really counts. Who has the best “spin” and/or the most money gets to win today with the TV, radio and the web (social media) as powerful means of communication. An interesting tidbit about the entertainment industry, Plato in his Republic understood that the Arts could influence elections and that therefore they must be strictly controlled so as not to corrupt the Citizens, he would be appalled at what comes out of Hollywood today..

But there is more as we have a representative system of government as the Citizens with the right to vote do not vote directly they vote for Representatives. In the Federal system as originally setup the Citizens voted for someone to represent them in the House of Representatives known as the Peoples house, for obvious reasons.   The House with the Constitutional mandate to prepare an operating budget for the Federal government was given this task so that the Citizens could control the spending since it was their representatives that were responsible for the budget.

This was a much debated system with concerns that the Citizens would find ways to have the federal government find ways to spend money on them, the citizens.  So to counter this tendency the Senate was established (for other reasons as well) and they had to concur with the House on spending bills.

Now the Senate was originally set up to be filled with appointed Senators two from each state.  The logic being that the several states would appoint seasoned and experienced Citizens to these positions.  It was probably assumed back then that these would be wealthy land owners and they would represent the upper class of the country while the House was for the common man.  A check and balance system again.

So with this system both ends of the Citizens were represented the common man and the wealthy man. And they had to work together to get anything done.

But over the last couple of elections cycles this system has been subverted by the Democratic Progressives and the current occupant of the White House Barak Husain Obama the first president that actually instructs the Senate to refuse to bring up House passed Budgets. So instead of doing their job they demand that their spending ideas be taken and no debate is allowed.  The president approves of this process since he does nothing to stop it and instead demands that the House Republicans give him what he wants. This is probably unconstitutional but since the Public education system has produced several generations of students with no real understanding of the process and so the media can blame the House for not giving Obama what he wants. Which is absurd since the House is the peoples House and it is their main responsibility not the Senate nor the Presidents to produce a Federal Budget.

James Madison, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”